I
am torn between two agonies. There is
fire around me, always, never-ending fire that burns in my breast and turns my
feathers to cinders. They watch me when
I fly, marveling at my brilliance. Were
they me. Would they understand. I have not died and yet I have died so many
times I have lost count of the ages. I
am like the insect trapped in amber, frozen in a perpetual state of half-life,
wondering when I will ever be free and knowing that no one has the will or
power to break my cage. But I am voiceless
to protest my situation, forever imprisoned, forever ignored.

My
first agony is my yearning to be free.
They value my tears for their healing powers and yet they do not know
why I weep. Are they so blind? Do my radiant feathers of red and gold and
blue enrapture them so much that they cannot comprehend my pain and
sorrow? Look at me. I am phoenix, you know the legend. I dread the night, fear the death of the sun
for each night it heralds my own death.
I am consumed, continuously, by that raging fire that leaps up around me
and destroys my body. It is a horrible
way to die and yet I cannot ever escape, not even in the permanent oblivion
that mortals so dread. Such a thing
would be a blessing but it is denied me.
So I can only cry, that keening ringing voice that echoes across the
mountains and shakes the hearts of all who hear it. And I weep, my tears spilling down and evaporating in the fires
that roar around and through me, burning my heart to nothing, washing me away
with the cold mountain air. I die with
the sun and rise with the sun. And it
will never end, it has not for all these centuries.

The
humans, they only watch and marvel. Am
I such a thing, such a show that they would delegate my pain to a mere
afterthought? Have they become so
inured to my death that they will take my tears and shed none in return? I am a mockery, a paroxysm of pain and
grief. Watch if you will, bear witness
to my passing, but do not become immune to it.
I feel the fire, I feel my death, that exact moment my heart stops
beating and the sun slides over the horizon.
Do you not understand that I feel?
Do you not understand that my ringing cry is not one of triumph but of
agony? Please, do not turn me into
this. I wonder if this is part of my
prison, that my bars are a lack of empathy, glassy glazed eyes that fail to
comprehend. Pain cannot be ignored, not
by the sufferer. But apparently it is
easily turned away and forgotten with a twist of the human mind.

My
second agony is my rising. But how can
this be pain, if I have endured the fire?
It is a thing of triumph, of the ultimate rebirth. I have arisen! I have conquered death!
My wings leap from the ashes, scattering the remains of the night and
rejoicing in the birth of a new day.
Life is restored, my feathers renewed, and light spills forth from the
dawn, lighting my eyes to rubies. I can
soar through the perfect sky, echoing the joy of flight through the lonely
mountain passes, the wind through my wings and the death of the previous night
forgotten. It is joy. Pure, unadulterated, joy. I am the ultimate cheat, the greatest
subterfuge in the world in that I can give death its due and then snatch my
hand back at the last minute. A
constant gambit with all the cards in my deck.
And yet it is an agony of its own, for each time I rise I face the fire
once more. It will come, it is
inevitable. All the beauty of life
cannot be erased of this stain, this horrible stigma that dwells across my back
like a shadow. Death will come. And I will weep and thrash as the fire
claims me.

Yet,
when my wings spread and my eyes open, I can push this thought aside. I can rise, can breath, can be. And that is where the agony lies. I rage even as I burn that people can forget
my pain so easily and yet each morning I do the same thing. Am I nothing but a hypocrite, crying out to
be noticed while refusing to notice myself in the process? This is a fire of its own, a fire of my own
make and devising. I am my own doom in
this, my own death. A second cage, this
time one I hold the key for but can never bring myself to open. I forget my own pain and rejoice in the
brief respite, never acknowledging that when the light fades the fire will fall
and I will die. Alone. Forgotten, even by myself. For I am the phoenix, and I will never die
in the way I wish.

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